Amidst all this Air Log strike hysteria, I think people are missing the big picture. Let's step back, take a deep breath and expand our view a tad, shall we?
FACT: No one can say with certainty how many pilots will walk. No one. There will be opinions on both sides, but in the end it is an unknown.
Air Log will publicly take a confident stance. They have to - they cannot show any weakness. They will bluster about this or that...how they're hiring "temps" or whatever...but the bottom line is that they really cannot say how a strike would affect them. Period.
Okay, now let's look at it from their customers', the oil companies' points of view: Oil companies have transportation contracts with Air Log that they fully and reasonably expect will be honored. They cannot and more importantly will not accept any disruption in service; their employees need to be carried by helicopter and that's that. Boats are *not* a viable alternative, even temporarily.
My personal opinion is that the oil companies will not be very sympathetic or understanding to Air Log. I believe that the oil company management will not tolerate *any* disruptions in either their scheduled crew-change flights or their offshore inter-platform flights, especially disruptions of the vendor's own making.
Having said that, we can safely assume that management from Air Log has met with the management of their major oil company clients to discuss a possible strike by pilots. I believe that the oil companies have already given Air Log a mandate that there better not be any such disruptions. ANY! (It gets back to that contract thing.)
So. Where are we? Simple, there will be no strike.
Air Log will blink. They simply cannot afford one day of a strike in which even one oil company crew-change is cancelled. Because who's it going to be? Who makes the call as to which crew-change goes and which one doesn't - especially when you don't even know in advance how many crew-changes might have to be cancelled? You KNOW there have to be some pretty nervous decision-makers at Air Log right aboot now...biting their nails, going down the list, trying to determine which are the most important flights to cover and which ones they can "safely" cancel or farm-out without too much penalty...coming up with contingency after contingency based on X, Y, and Z percentages of pilots on strike.
To be sure, the other GOM operators have pledged their support to ALI management. Oh yes, I'll just bet the other operators would love to get their hands on some Air Log work! "Suuuuuure, we'll cover your flights...if we can," they say. And depending on their excess capacity, some other operators may be able to help out.
Bottom Line: Any way you slice it, Air Log can only gamble on how well they'll be able to cope with a strike situation. But there is too much uncertainty for the oil companies to allow Air Log to gamble. A strike will not occur. The oil companies simply will not stand for it.